Grazer Philosophische Studien
74 (2007), 1 26.
PHILOSOPHICAL INTUITIONS: THEIR TARGET,
THEIR SOURCE, AND THEIR EPISTEMIC STATUS
Alvin I. GOLDMAN
Rutgers University
Summary
Intuitions play a critical role in analytical philosophical activity. But do they
qualify as genuine evidence for the sorts of conclusions philosophers seek?
Skeptical arguments against intuitions are reviewed, and a variety of ways of
trying to legitimate them are considered. A defense is offered of their evidential
status by showing how their evidential status can be embedded in a naturalistic
framework.
1. Intuitions in philosophy
One thing that distinguishes philosophical methodology from the meth-
odology of the sciences is its extensive and avowed reliance on intuition.
Especially when philosophers are engaged in philosophical  analysis , they
often get preoccupied with intuitions. To decide what is knowledge, refer-
ence, identity, or causation (or what is the concept of knowledge, refer-
ence, identity, or causation), philosophers routinely consider actual and
hypothetical examples and ask whether these examples provide instances of
the target category or concept. People s mental responses to these examples
are often called  intuitions , and these intuitions are treated as evidence
for the correct answer. At a minimum, they are evidence for the examples
being instances or non-instances of knowledge, reference, causation, etc.
Thus, intuitions play a particularly critical role in a certain sector of philo-
sophical activity.
The evidential weight accorded to intuition is often very high, in both
philosophical practice and philosophical reflection. Many philosophical
discoveries, or putative discoveries, are predicated on the occurrence of
certain widespread intuitions. It was a landmark discovery in analytic
epistemology when Edmund Gettier (1963) showed that knowledge isn t
equivalent to justified true belief. How did this  discovery take place?
It wasn t the mere publication of Gettier s two examples, or what he said
about them. It was the fact that almost everybody who read Gettier s
examples shared the intuition that these were not instances of knowing.
Had their intuitions been different, there would have been no discovery.
Appeals to intuition are not confined to epistemology; analytic philosophy
as a whole is replete with such appeals. Saul Kripke remarks:  Of course,
some philosophers think that something s having intuitive content is very
inconclusive evidence in favor of it. I think it is very heavy evidence in favor
of anything, myself. I really don t know, in a way, what more conclusive
evidence one can have for anything, ultimately speaking (1980: 42).
As a historical matter, philosophers haven t always described their meth-
odology in the language of intuition. In fact, this seems to be a fairly
recent bit of usage. Jaakko Hintikka (1999) traces the philosophical use
of  intuition to Chomsky s description of linguistics methodology. In
the history of philosophy, and even in the early years of analytic philoso-
phy, the terminology of intuition is not to be found. Of course, historical
philosophers dealt extensively with intuition in other contexts, but not
in the context of appealing to particular examples and their classification.
This is not to say that historical philosophers and earlier 20th-century
philosophers did not make similar philosophical moves. They did make
such moves, they just didn t use the term  intuition to describe them.
Consider Locke s presentation of the famous prince-cobbler case in his
discussion of personal identity:
For should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the
prince s past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted
by his own soul, every one sees he would be the same person with the prince
& (Locke 1694/1975: 44; emphasis added)
Locke says that every one  sees that a certain classification  being the
same as  is appropriate, and his term  sees is readily translatable, in
current terminology, as  intuits . Among ordinary-language philosophers
of the mid-20th century, roughly the same idea was expressed in terms of
what people would or wouldn t be inclined to say. One  would say that
the cobbler was the same person as the prince; one  wouldn t say that a
Gettier protagonist had knowledge. Here the propriety of saying or not
saying something took the place of having an intuition; the matter was
described in terms of speech inclinations rather than mental episodes.
Nonetheless, the epistemological status of these inclinations or episodes
2
played the same role in philosophical methodology. Each was invoked as
a crucial bit of evidence for the philosophical  facts in question.
2. Skepticism about intuitions
Nowadays philosophers routinely rely on intuitions to support or refute
philosophical analyses, but a number of skeptics have emerged who raise
challenges to this use of intuition. The skeptics include Robert Cummins
(1998), Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich (2001), and
Michael Devitt (1994). They dispute the evidential credentials or probity
of intuitions. They deny that intuitions confer the kind of evidential sup-
port that they are widely taken to confer.
The grounds for skepticism are somewhat variable, but mostly they
concern the fallibility or unreliability of intuitions, either intuitions in
general or philosophical intuitions in particular. Here are three specific
criticisms.
(1) Garden-variety intuitions are highly fallible. Why should philosophical
intuitions be any different? If the latter are highly fallible, however,
they shouldn t be trusted as evidence.
Garden-variety intuitions include premonitions about future events, intu-
itions about a person s character (based on his appearance, or a brief snatch
of conversation), and intuitions about probabilistic relationships. These are
all quite prone to error. What reason is there to think that philosophical
intuitions are more reliable?
(2) People often have conflicting intuitions about philosophical cases.
One person intuits that case x is an instance of property (or concept)
F while another person intuits that case x isn t an instance of property
(or concept) F. When such conflicts occur, one of the intuitions must
be wrong. If the conflicts are frequent, the percentage of erroneous
intuitions must be substantial and the percentage of correct intu-
itions not so high. Thus, the modest level of reliability of philosophi-
cal intuitions doesn t warrant assigning them significant evidential
weight.
A third ground for skepticism doesn t appeal directly to the unreliability of
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intuition but rather to our inability to (independently) know or determine
its reliability.
(3) The outputs of an instrument, procedure, or method constitute data
we can properly treat as evidence only when that instrument, proce-
dure, or method has been calibrated (Cummins 1998). Calibration
requires corroboration by an independent procedure. Has intuition
been calibrated? Has it been shown to be reliable by a method indepen-
dent of intuition itself? There is no way to do this. Suppose we have a
philosophical interest in fairness, and we ask people for their intuitions
about the fairness of distributions described in certain hypothetical
cases. We shouldn t trust their intuitions about these cases unless we
have antecedently determined that their fairness intuitor is reliable,
i.e., unless it has been calibrated. But how can we perform this cali-
bration? We don t have a  key by which to determine which outputs
of their intuitor are correct, and there is no key to be found.
3. Initial responses to skeptical challenges
For each of these skeptical challenges, there appear to be at least initially
plausible responses. In response to challenge (1), a defender of philo-
sophical intuition would want to distinguish between different types of
intuitions. First, the intuitions we have here identified are what might be
called classification or application intuitions, because they are intuitions
about how cases are to be classified, or whether various categories or con-
cepts apply to selected cases.1 This in itself, however, provides no reason
for thinking that philosophical intuitions are epistemically superior to
garden-variety intuitions. Why should classification or application intu-
itions be superior? A supplementary response is that application intuitions
are a species of rational intuitions, and that rational intuitions are more
reliable than others. Many authors are sympathetic to this approach,
but George Bealer (1998) has been most forceful in championing it.
Bealer distinguishes between physical and rational intuitions, and regards
only the latter as having special epistemic worth. We shall return to this
below.
1. Frank Jackson (1998) also views classification, or application, intuitions as the central
type of philosophical intuition.
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In response to challenge (2), a defender of philosophical intuitions might
urge caution. It remains to be seen just how extensive are the conflicts in
application intuitions across different individuals. Moreover, whether the
conflicts are genuine depends on the precise contents of the intuitions, or
what they are taken to be evidence for. It is possible that a state of affairs
for which one person s intuition is evidence doesn t really conflict with a
state of affairs for which another person s intuition is evidence, even when
there is a  surface conflict. I ll return to this point below as well.
In response to challenge (3), a defender of philosophical intuitions
might reject Cummins s epistemological presuppositions. The defender
might say that independent corroboration, or calibration, of an instru-
ment, procedure, or method is too stringent a requirement on its evi-
dence-conferring power. In particular, there must be some procedures or
methods that are basic. In other terminology, there must be some basic
 sources of evidence. Basic sources are likely to include mental faculties
such as perception, memory, introspection, deductive reasoning, and
inductive reasoning. These faculties are all regarded, by many or most
epistemologists, as bona fide sources of evidence. Yet all or many of these
sources may be basic in precisely the sense that we have no independent
faculty or method by which to establish their reliability. Yet that doesn t
undercut their evidence-conferring power. Consider memory, for example.
Memory may be our basic way of forming true beliefs about the past. All
other ways of gaining access to the past depend on memory, so they cannot
provide independent ways of establishing memory s reliability (see Alston
1993). If we accept Cummins s constraint on evidencehood, the outputs
of memory will not constitute legitimate data or pieces of evidence. But
that is unacceptable, on pain of general skepticism. It is better to accept
the conclusion that basic sources of evidence don t have to satisfy the
calibration, or independent corroboration, constraint. Intuition may be
among the basic sources of evidence.
Although Cummins s independent corroboration condition on a source
of evidence is too stringent, it seems reasonable to substitute a weaker con-
dition as a further requirement on evidencehood. This weaker condition
is a  negative one, viz., that we not be justified in believing that the puta-
tive source is unreliable. A possible variant is the condition that we not be
justified in strongly doubting that the source is reliable. The latter negative
condition will sometimes be invoked in the discussion to follow.
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4. The targets of philosophical analysis
In response to skeptical challenge (2), I said that resolution of this challenge
requires a more careful inquiry into the precise targets of philosophical
analysis. Philosophical analysis, of course, doesn t simply aim to answer
questions about particular cases. Epistemology isn t much interested in
whether this or that example is an instance of knowledge; rather, it aims to
say what knowledge is in general, or something in that ballpark. Individual
cases are typically introduced as test cases of one or more general accounts.
Depending on how a case is classified, it might falsify a general account or
corroborate it. But what, exactly, does philosophical analysis aim to give
general accounts of? Knowledge, causation, personal identity, and so forth
are typical examples of categories that absorb philosophy, but different
theorists have different conceptions (often unstated) of how, exactly, these
targets are to be construed. A choice among these different construals can
make a big difference to the viability of intuition as a source of evidence
about the targets, because many construals invite strong doubts that the
source is reliable. Let us examine five ways of construing the targets.
(1) Platonic forms
(2) Natural kinds
(3) Concepts1  concepts in the Fregean sense
(4) Concepts2  concepts in the psychological sense, specifically, the indi-
vidualized, personal sense
(5) Concepts3  shared concepts2
The first two construals invoke entities that aren t described as concepts.
Each is some sort of non-conceptual entity that exists entirely  outside the
mind . According to the first construal, philosophy aims to obtain insight
into (e.g.) the form of the Good, and other such eternal, non-spatially-
located entities. According to the second construal, knowledge, causation,
personal identity, and so forth are  natural properties or relations, which
exist and have their distinctive characteristics quite independently of
anybody s concepts or conception of them, like water or electricity.
There are two questions to be posed for each of these (and similar)
construals. First, under this construal how could it plausibly turn out that
intuitions are good evidence for the  constitution or characteristics of the
targets? Second, does this construal comport with the actual intuitional
methodology used by analytic philosophers? Start with construal (1). If
6
the target of philosophical analysis is the constitution or composition of
Platonic forms (or their ilk), the question is why an episode that occurs
in somebody s mind  an episode of having an intuition  should count
as evidence about the composition of a Platonic form.2 If someone experi-
ences an intuition that the protagonist in a selected Gettier example doesn t
know the designated proposition, why should this intuitional experience
be evidence that the form KNOWLEDGE is such that the imaginary
protagonist s belief in this proposition doesn t  participate in that form?
What connection is there between the intuition episode and the proper-
ties of the form KNOWLEDGE such that the intuition episode is a reli-
able indicator of the properties of KNOWLEDGE? (I am assuming, for
argument s sake, that this form exists.) We have reason to seriously doubt
the existence of a reliable indicatorship relation.
Notice that it doesn t much matter how, exactly, we characterize intu-
itions. Whether intuitions are inclinations to believe, or a sui generis
kind of seeming or propositional attitude (see Bealer 1998: 207), it is
still a puzzle why the occurrence of such a mental event should provide
evidence for the composition of a Platonic form. Compare this case with
perceptual seemings and memory seemings. In these cases we know (in
outline, if not in detail) the causal pathways by which the properties of
an external stimulus can influence the properties of a visual or auditory
experience. With this kind of dependency in place, it is highly plausible
that variations in the experience reflect variations in the stimulus. So the
specifics of the experience can plausibly be counted as evidence about the
properties of the stimulus. Similarly in the case of memory, what is pres-
ently recalled varies (counterfactually) with what occurred earlier, so the
specifics of the recall event can be a reliable indicator of the properties of
the original occurrence. But is there a causal pathway or counterfactual
dependence between Platonic forms and any mental  registration of them?
A causal pathway seems to be excluded, because Platonic forms are not
spatio-temporal entities. A counterfactual dependence is not impossible,
but there is reason to doubt that such a dependence obtains. I here register
the general sorts of qualms that have long plagued traditional accounts
of rational insight or  apprehension of abstract entities. These accounts
leave too many mysteries, mysteries that undercut any putative reliabil-
ity needed to support a reflective acceptance of an evidential relation-
2. For an earlier treatment of this question, and analogous questions for the other construals
of the targets, see Goldman and Pust (1998).
7
ship between intuitional episodes and their targets construed as abstract
entities.
Let us turn now to construal (2), the natural kinds construal, which has
been formulated and championed by Hilary Kornblith (2002). Kornblith
emphasizes that natural kinds are  in the world phenomena, emphati-
cally not merely concepts of ours. He rejects concepts as the objects of
epistemological theorizing on the ground that by bringing concepts into
an epistemological investigation,  we only succeed in changing the sub-
ject: instead of talking about knowledge, we end up talking about our
concept of knowledge (2002: 9 10). For Kornblith, the methodology of
consulting intuitions (within epistemology) is part of a scientific inquiry
into the nature of knowledge, closely akin, to use his example, to what a
rock collector does when gathering samples of some interesting kind of
stone for the purpose of figuring out what the samples have in common.
Let us examine this approach.
Presumably, an inquiry into the composition of a natural kind is an
inquiry into a this-world phenomenon. Even if natural kinds have the
same essence or composition in every possible world in which they exist,
the question for natural science is which of the conceivable natural kinds
occupy our world. Does this feature of scientific inquiry into natural kinds
mesh with the philosophical practice of consulting intuitions? No. A
ubiquitous feature of philosophical practice is to consult intuitions about
merely conceivable cases. Imaginary examples are treated with the same
respect and importance as real examples. Cases from the actual world do
not have superior evidential power as compared with hypothetical cases.
How is this compatible with the notion that the target of philosophical
inquiry is the composition of natural phenomena? If philosophers were
really investigating what Kornblith specifies, would they treat conceiv-
able and actual examples on a par? Scientists do nothing of the sort. They
devote great time and labor into investigating actual-world objects; they
construct expensive equipment to perform their investigations. If the job
could be done as well by consulting intuitions about imaginary examples,
why bother with all this expensive equipment and labor-intensive experi-
ments? Evidently, unless philosophers are either grossly deluded or have a
magical shortcut that has eluded scientists (neither of which is plausible),
their philosophical inquiries must have a different type of target or sub-
ject-matter.
In responding to criticisms of this sort, Kornblith (2005) indicates that
although he regards epistemology as an empirical discipline, it nonetheless
8
investigates necessary truths about knowledge. Just as it is a necessary truth
that water is H2O, so there are various necessary truths about knowledge,
and it is epistemology s job to discover these truths. Might this be why it
is legitimate for epistemologists to adduce merely conceivable examples,
involving other possible worlds? Kornblith doesn t say this, and it seems
inadequate as a potential response. While it may be a necessary truth that
water is H2O, scientists first have to discover that what water is (in the
actual world) is H2O, and Kornblith admits that this must be an empirical
discovery. Intuitive reactions to merely imaginary cases are not part of such
an empirical procedure. Similarly, we cannot scientifically discover what
knowledge is in the actual world by consulting intuitions about imaginary
cases. So why do philosophers engage in this activity?
When I raise this point (Goldman 2005) in discussing Kornblith s book,
he concedes that his approach doesn t explain philosophers preoccupation
with imaginary examples. He adds:  Goldman may have underestimated
the extent to which I believe that standard philosophical practice should
be modified (2005: 428). So Kornblith agrees that, so long as we are
discussing existing philosophical practice, his kind of naturalism cannot
do the job. But he holds that existing practice is somehow inadequate or
objectionable. I shall return to these concerns of his at the end of this
paper. For now I reiterate the point that as long as we are merely trying
to describe or elucidate existing practice, the natural kinds approach (as
Kornblith spells it out) cannot be right.
5. Concepts in the Fregean sense
We turn now to the third proposed construal, concepts in the Fregean
sense of  concept , which we called  concepts1 . In this sense, concepts are
abstract entities of some sort, graspable by multiple individuals. These enti-
ties are thought of as capable of becoming objects of a faculty of intuition,
rational intuition. Moreover, philosophers like Bealer (1998) want to say
that rational intuitions are suffi
ciently reliable to confer evidence on the
appropriate classification (or  application ) propositions. Indeed, rational
intuition is a faculty or source that is modally reliable (in Bealer s terminol-
ogy). Two questions arise here: What distinguishes rational intuitions from
other types of intuition, and is there good reason to think that rational
intuitions  specifically, the sub-category of classification intuitions  have
the needed properties to qualify as an evidential source?
9
According to Bealer, rational intuitions are distinguishable from other
(e.g., physical) intuitions in virtue of the fact that rational intuitions have
a sort of modal content.  [W]hen we have a rational intuition  say, that if
P then not not P  it presents itself as necessary; it does not seem to us that
things could be otherwise; it must be that if P then not not P. (1998: 207)
Bealer goes on to say that application intuitions, i.e., intuitions to the effect
that a certain concept does or does not apply to a certain case, are a species
of rational intuitions. He is not sure how to analyze what it means for an
intuition to present itself as necessary (and hence to be a rational intuition),
but offers the following tentative proposal:  necessarily, if x intuits that P,
it seems to x that P and also that necessarily P (1998: 207).
Does this work? How are we to understand the initial operator  nec-
essarily ? Is it metaphysical necessity? So understood, the claim can t be
right. It implies that it is metaphysically impossible for there to be any
creature for whom it seems that 18 + 35 = 53 but for whom it doesn t seem
that necessarily, 18 + 35 = 53. But such a creature surely is possible. For
starters, there could be a creature that understands arithmetic but doesn t
understand modality. Second, there could be a creature that understands
both arithmetic and modality but forms intuitions about modality more
slowly than intuitions about arithmetic. At some moments, it seems to
this creature that the foregoing arithmetic sum is correct but it doesn t
yet seem to him that it is necessary. The same point applies to applica-
tion intuitions. Presented with a Gettier example, it strikes a beginning
philosophy student that this is not an instance of knowing, but it doesn t
strike the student as necessarily true. I suspect this is the actual condition
of many beginning philosophy students. They have application intuitions
without any accompanying modal intuitions.
A different approach to the explication of rational intuitions is pursued
by Ernest Sosa (1998). In seeking to identify intuition in the philosophi-
cally relevant sense, Sosa places great weight on the content of an intu-
ition being abstract.  To intuit is to believe an abstract proposition merely
because one understands it and it is of a certain sort &  (1998: 263 264).
Should rational or intellectual intuitions be restricted to ones whose con-
tents are abstract propositions? Sosa characterizes abstract propositions as
ones that  abstract away from any mention of particulars (1998: 258). But
this definition threatens to exclude our primary philosophical examples,
viz., application intuitions. These often concern particulars, both particular
individuals and particular situations. Thus, Sosa s account threatens to rule
out the very examples that most interest us.
10
If we can t unify rational intuitions in terms of their contents, perhaps
they can be unified in terms of their phenomenology. Perhaps a common
phenomenology unites intuitions concerning logic, mathematics, and
conceptual relationships. What might this common phenomenology be?
A phenomenological feature they share is the feeling that they come from
 I know not where . Their origins are introspectively opaque. This isn t
helpful, however, to rationalists of the type under discussion. All intuitions
have this opaqueness-of-origin phenomenology, including garden-variety
intuitions like baseless hunches and conjectures, which are rightly dispar-
aged as unreliable and lacking in evidential worth. Grouping application
intuitions with this larger,  trashy set of intuitions is likely to contaminate
them, not demonstrate their evidential respectability.
This problem might be averted if we turn from phenomenology to psy-
chological origins, including unconscious psychological origins. Hunches
and baseless conjectures presumably lack a provenance comparable to
that of mathematical, logical, or application intuitions. So unconscious
origin looks like a promising basis for contrasting these families of intu-
itions. There is a serious problem here, though. It is unlikely that there is
a single psychological faculty responsible for all intellectual insight. The
psychological pathways that lead to mathematical, logical, and application
intuitions respectively are probably quite different. Elementary arithmetic
intuitions, for example, are apparently the product of a domain-specific
faculty of numerical cognition, one that has been intensively studied in
recent cognitive science (Dehaene 1997). There is no reason to expect logi-
cal intuitions to be products of the same faculty. Application intuitions are
likely to have still different psychological sources, to be explored below.
So if the suggestion is that application intuitions should be grouped with
mathematical and logical intuitions because of a uniform causal process
or faculty of intellectual insight, this is psychologically untenable. It is
initially plausible because they are not phenomenologically distinguish-
able. But if causal origin runs deeper than phenomenology  as it surely
does  then the sameness-of-psychological-origin thesis is unsustainable.
Moreover, difference of psychological origin is important, because it under-
cuts the notion that rational intuitions are homogeneous in their reliability.
Arithmetic intuitions might be reliable  even modally reliable  without
application intuitions being comparably reliable.
If the targets of application intuitions are Fregean concepts, does this
inspire confidence that such intuitions are highly reliable? Oddly, Bealer
himself makes no claim to this effect; his central claim is vastly more cau-
11
tious. Bealer acknowledges that concepts can be possessed either weakly
or strongly. Weak possession is compatible with misunderstanding or
incomplete understanding. Only strong possession, which Bealer calls
 determinate concept possession, carries with it a guarantee of truth-track-
ing intuitions. However, Bealer offers no guarantee that either ordinary
people or philosophers who possess a concept will possess it determi-
nately. In the concluding section of his 1998 paper, Bealer summarizes
his argument (in part) as follows:  With this informal characterization
in view, intuitive considerations then led us to the possibility of determi-
nate possession, the premise that it should be at least possible for most
of the central concepts of philosophy to be possessed determinately
(1998: 231, emphasis in the original). If the determinate possession of
philosophical concepts is merely possible, and by no means guaranteed
or even probable, why should philosophers rely on ordinary people s
intuitions as guides to a concept s contours? No evidence is provided that
people, especially lay people, actually grasp selected philosophical con-
cepts determinately. So Bealer s approach provides no solid underpinning
for the philosophical practice of consulting ordinary people s application
intuitions.
Finally, construing Fregean concepts as the targets of application intu-
itions doesn t safeguard against the possibility of different people having
different application intuitions about the same concept and example. If
there are many instances of such conflicts, these intuitions won t have
even high contingent reliability, much less high modal reliability. Tradi-
tionally, philosophers haven t worried much about this prospect. But
some of the intuition skeptics mentioned at the outset worry very much
about it. Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich (2001)
have done studies of people s intuitions, including intuitions about the
applicability of the knowledge concept in Gettier-style cases. In contrast
to the widespread view among epistemologists that Gettier-style cases
prompt highly uniform intuitions, they found substantial divergences in
intuition, surprisingly, along cultural lines. Undergraduate students at
Rutgers University were used as subjects, and were divided into those with
Western (i.e., European) ethnicities versus East Asian ethnicities. In one
study involving a Gettier-style case, a large majority of Western subjects
rendered the standard verdict that the protagonist in the example  only
believes the proposition, whereas a majority of East Asian subjects said
the opposite, i.e., that the protagonist  knows (2001: 443; see Figure
5). If cases like this are rampant (and that remains to be shown), it s a
12
non-trivial challenge to the reliability of application intuitions under the
Fregean concept construal.
6. Concepts in the personal psychological sense
Suppose that the target of philosophical analysis is concepts, but concepts
in the psychological rather than the Fregean sense. In this sense, a concept
is literally something in the head, for example, a mental representation of a
category. If there is a language of thought, a concept might be a (semanti-
cally interpreted) word or phrase in the language of thought. What I mean
by a personal psychological sense of concept is that the concept is fixed by
what s in its owner s head rather than what s in the heads of other members
of the community.3 It s an individual affair rather than a social affair. This
does not prejudice the case for a separate sense of  concept pertaining to
a community (what I mean to denote by  concept3 ).
A chief attraction of construing concepts2 as the targets of philosophical
analysis (though perhaps not the ultimate targets) is that it nicely handles
challenges to the reliability of intuition arising from variability or conflicts
of intuitions across persons. If the targets are construed as concepts in the
personal psychological sense, then Bernard s intuition that F applies to x
is evidence only for his personal concept of F, and Elke s intuition that F
doesn t apply to x is evidence only for her personal concept of F. If Ber-
nard intuits that a specified example is an instance of knowledge and Elke
intuits otherwise, the conflict between their intuitions can be minimized,
because each bears evidentially on their own personal concepts, which
may differ. This may be precisely what transpires in the cases reported by
Weinberg et al. Under this construal of the evidential targets, interpersonal
variation in intuitions doesn t pose a problem for intuitional reliability,
because each person s intuition may correctly indicate something about
3. This is not intended as a position statement on the wide/narrow issue concerning the
contents of thought. It may be that thought contents in general do not supervene simply on
events that transpire in an individual thinker s head. Nonetheless, the specific thoughts of each
person  including the specific concepts each entertains  are a special function of what goes on
in that individual s head rather than anybody else s. If Jones never entertains the thought that
aardvarks drive automobiles, his never entertaining it is a function of what happens in his head
rather than any other person s head. And if he never entertains the concept of an aardvark, this
is a function of what happens in his head rather than any other person s head  at least of what
happens in his head in interaction with the environment rather than what happens in any other
person s head in interaction with the environment.
13
his or her concept2, viz., whether the concept2 does or doesn t apply to
the chosen example.
It must be conceded that when a person thinks the thought, or has the
intuition,  The Gettier disjunction case isn t an instance of knowledge , the
content of the thought is not self-referential. It isn t naturally expressed as,
 The Gettier disjunction case isn t an instance of my personal concept of
knowledge . Nonetheless, epistemologists are at liberty to take the person s
intuition, or thought, as evidence for a proposition concerning that person s
individualized, psychological concept. This is what I propose to do.
But why is a person s intuition evidence for a personal psychological
concept? I assume that any evidential relationship depends, at a minimum,
on a relation of reliable indicatorship. But what makes such a relation hold
in the case of application intuitions and concepts2? Do we have reason for
thinking that it holds? And do we avoid reasons for seriously doubting the
existence of a reliable indicatorship relation?
Distinguish two approaches to the relation between concepts and evi-
dencehood: constitutive and non-constitutive approaches. A constitutive
approach can be illustrated by reference to phenomenalism (or other
assorted versions of idealism). According to phenomenalism, what it is to
be a physical object of a certain sort is that suitably situated subjects will
experience perceptual appearances of an appropriate kind. Appearances
of the appropriate kind are not only evidence for a physical object of the
relevant sort being present, but the evidentiary relation is constitutively
grounded. The evidentiary status of appearances is grounded in the very
constitution of physical objects. Physical objects are precisely the sorts of
things that give rise to appearances of the kind in question. According to
realism, by contrast, to be a physical object has nothing essentially to do
with perceptual experience. True, physical objects may cause perceptual
experiences, but what they are (intrinsically) is wholly independent of
perceptual experience. This view is compatible with perceptual experiences
qualifying as evidence for the presence of appropriate physical objects, but
here the evidential relation would not be constitutively grounded. There
are many possible theories of non-constitutive evidencehood; I won t try
to survey such theories. What is important for the moment is simply
the distinction between constitutive and non-constitutive groundings of
evidential relations.
Although I don t support phenomenalism, I am inclined to support a
parallel theory for the evidential power of application intuitions. I think
that the evidential status of application intuitions is of the constitutively-
14
grounded variety. It s part of the nature of concepts (in the personal psy-
chological sense) that possessing a concept tends to give rise to beliefs and
intuitions that accord with the contents of the concept. If the content of
someone s concept F implies that F does (doesn t) apply to example x, then
that person is disposed to intuit that F applies (doesn t apply) to x when
the issue is raised in his mind. Notice, I don t say that possessing a particu-
lar concept of knowledge makes one disposed to believe a correct general
account of that knowledge concept. Correct general accounts are devilishly
difficult to achieve, and few people try. All I am saying is that possessing a
concept makes one disposed to have pro-intuitions toward correct appli-
cations and con-intuitions toward incorrect applications  correct, that
is, relative to the contents of the concept as it exists in the subject s head.
However, our description of these dispositions must be further qualified
and constrained, to get matters right.
There are several ways in which application intuitions can go wrong.
First, the subject may be misinformed or insufficiently informed about
example x. Her intuitive judgment can go awry because of an errone-
ous belief about some detail of the example. Second, although she isn t
misinformed about the example, she might forget or lose track of some
features of the example while mentally computing the applicability of F
to it. Third, the subject might have a false theory about her concept of F,
and this theory may intrude when forming an application intuition. It s
important here to distinguish between a theory presupposed by a concept
and a theory about the concept, i.e., a general account of the concept s
content. Here I advert only to the latter. Any of these misadventures can
produce an inaccurate intuition, i.e., inaccurate relative to the user s own
personal concept. For these reasons, intuitions are not infallible evidence
about that personal concept.
These points go some distance toward explaining actual philosophi-
cal practice. First, philosophers are leery about trusting the intuitions of
other philosophical analysts who have promoted general accounts of the
analysandum, e.g., knowledge or justification. Commitment to their own
favored account can distort their intuitions, even with respect to their
own (pre-theoretical) concept. Second, because erroneous beliefs about
an example can breed incorrect intuitions, philosophers prefer stipulated
examples to live examples for purposes of hypothesis testing. In a stipu-
lated example, the crucial characteristics of the example are highlighted for
the subject, to focus attention on what is relevant to the general account
currently being tested.
15
Although errors in application intuitions are possible, a person s appli-
cation intuitions vis-Ä…-vis their own personal concepts are highly likely
to be correct if the foregoing safeguards are in place. Thus, the reliability
criterion for evidence-conferring power  one very natural criterion (or
partial criterion)  is met under the concepts2 construal of the targets of
philosophical analysis.
Another virtue of the concepts2 approach is the congenial naturalistic
framework it provides for the respectability of application intuitions as
evidence. Unlike Platonic forms, natural kinds, or Fregean concepts, there
can be a clear causal relationship between personal concepts and applica-
tion intuitions concerning those concepts. Although psychological details
remain to be filled in, there is nothing inherently mysterious in there being
a causal pathway from personal psychological concepts to application
intuitions pertaining to those concepts. Personal psychological concepts
can be expected to produce accurate intuitions concerning their applica-
bility. So as long as the various threats of error of the kinds enumerated
above aren t too serious, high reliability among application intuitions is
unperplexing and unremarkable under the concepts2 approach. Although
naturalistically-minded philosophers are understandably suspicious and
skeptical about intuitions and their evidential bona fides, here we have a
satisfying resolution to the challenge from naturalistic quarters, a resolu-
tion that copes straightforwardly with existing evidence of interpersonal
variation in intuitions. Thus, I share with Kornblith the aim of obtaining
an epistemology of philosophical method that sits comfortably within
a naturalistic perspective. Whereas Kornblith s naturalism leads him to
extra-psychological objects as the targets of philosophical theory and to
very limited acceptance of intuitional methodology, my psychologistic
brand of naturalism leads to personal psychological concepts as the initial
targets of philosophical analysis and to a greater acceptance of standard
intuitional methodology.
7. Shared and socially fixed concepts
A predictable response to our proposal is that even if intuitions constitute
evidence for personal psychological concepts, that s not a very interesting
fact. Personal concepts can t be all  or even very much  of what phi-
losophy is after. Fair enough. I am not saying that the analysis of personal
concepts is the be-all and end-all of philosophy, even the analytical part
16
of philosophy. But perhaps we can move from concepts2 to concepts3, i.e.,
shared (psychological) concepts. This can be done if a substantial agree-
ment is found across many individuals concepts2. Such sharing cannot
be assumed at the outset, however; it must be established. Philosophers
often presume that if their own and their colleagues intuitions point
to a certain conclusion about a concept, that s all the evidence needed.
If discerning judges agree in matters of concept application, then other
judges would make the same assessment. The empirical work of Weinberg,
Nichols and Stich (2001), however, raises doubts about this. And we all
know from even casual philosophical discussion that philosophers don t
always share one another s intuitions. Moreover, intuitive disagreement
is probably underreported in the literature, because when philosophers
publish their work they typically avoid examples they know have elicited
conflicting intuitions among their colleagues. So the extent of disput-
ed intuitions may be greater than philosophers officially acknowledge,
and this may challenge the hope of identifying unique, socially shared
concepts.
To safeguard some sort of supra-individual conception of concepts,
there are other ways to proceed. One possibility is not to place the per-
sonal concepts of all individuals on a par, but to privilege some of them.
How might this be done? There are several possibilities, some appealing to
metaphysics and some to language. An appeal to metaphysics might return
us to the natural kinds approach. Concepts that correspond to natural
kinds should be privileged, those that don t, shouldn t. The problem here
is that it s doubtful that every target of philosophical analysis has a cor-
responding natural kind. Take knowledge again as an example. A popular
view in contemporary epistemology (with which I have much sympathy)
is that knowledge has an important context-sensitive dimension. The
exact standard for knowledge varies from context to context. Since it
seems unlikely that natural kinds have contextually variable dimensions,
this renders it dubious that any natural kind corresponds to one of our
ordinary concepts of knowledge.
A more promising approach is to recast the entire discussion in terms
of language. Concepts are the meanings of (predicative) words or phrases
(Jackson 1998: 33 34). The correct public concept of knowledge is the
meaning of  know . Many people who use the word  know and its cog-
nates may not have a full or accurate grasp of its meaning. Their intuitions
should be ignored or marginalized when we try to fix the extension and
intension of the term. Only expert intuitions should be consulted. This is
17
a natural line of development of Putnam s (1975) theme that meanings
are determined by a division of linguistic labor in which experts play a
central role.4
I hesitate to go down this road for two reasons. First, the idea of a divi-
sion of linguistic labor, in which deference to linguistic experts holds sway,
makes most sense for technical terms that aren t mastered by ordinary users
of the language. Clearly, it would be a mistake for philosophical theorists
to rely on the classification intuitions of users with inadequate mastery
of the meanings of the words. However, concepts expressed by technical
terms are not the chief concern of philosophical analysis. Philosophical
analysis is mainly interested in common concepts, ones that underpin our
folk metaphysics, our folk epistemology, our folk ethics, and so forth. I
don t say this is all that philosophy is or should be concerned with. But
when philosophers engage in analysis, folk concepts are what preoccupy
them (Jackson, 1998). In this terrain, there isn t any significant expert/
novice divide. Thus, if there are still differences in personal concepts asso-
ciated with a single word, the differences cannot be resolved by appeal to
(semantic) experts.
Second, there is a general problem with any attempt to configure the
conceptual analysis enterprise in purely linguistic terms. Many of our
most important folk-ontological concepts, I submit, are prior to and
below the level of natural language. For instance, our unity criteria for
physical objects fix the contours of single whole objects without recourse
to predicates of natural language. They are independent of particular lin-
guistic sortals, as illustrated by our ability to visually pick out a unitary
physical object without yet deciding what kind of object it is. ( It s a bird,
it s a plane, no, it s Superman! ) Indeed, deployment of such criteria is
a prerequisite for children to acquire mastery of verbal sortals. Children
must already pick out unified physical objects in order to learn (at least
with approximate accuracy) what adults refer to by such sortals as  rabbit ,
 cup ,  tree ,  toy , and so on (Bloom 2000). Evidently, the concept of a
whole physical object is an important one for folk metaphysics to analyze.
Thus, it would be a mistake to equate the domain of conceptual analysis
with the domain of linguistic analysis.
I conclude that there is no satisfactory way to promote a public or com-
munity-wide conception of concepts to the primary, or central, position in
4. Terence Horgan and colleagues develop a semantic approach to application intuitions
in which semantic competence plays a prominent role (Graham and Horgan 1998; Henderson
and Horgan 2001).
18
the project of conceptual analysis. From an epistemic standpoint, certainly,
it is best to focus on the personal psychological conception of concepts
as the basic starting point, and view the public conception of concepts as
derivative from that one in the indicated fashion.
8. Are intuition-based beliefs justified a priori?
Defenders of intuition-driven methodology hold that intuitions provide
evidence, or warrant, for classification propositions of interest to philoso-
phers. What kind of warrant is this? The warrant in question is commonly
held to be of the a priori variety. Intuition, after all, is a traditional hall-
mark of rationalism, an oft-mentioned source of a priori warrant. Is this
something I am prepared to accept? Isn t my purpose, in this and related
papers, to show how the evidence-conferring power of intuitions fits within
a naturalistic perspective in epistemology? How can a priori warrant be
reconciled with epistemological naturalism?
A first reply is that, in my view, there is no incompatibility between
naturalism and a priori warrant. True, many contemporary naturalists,
following Quine, wholly reject the a priori. But I see no necessity for
this position. My favored kind of epistemological naturalism holds that
warrant, or justifi cation, arises from, or supervenes on, psychological
processes that are causally responsible for belief (Goldman 1986, 1994).
The question, then, is whether there are kinds of psychological processes
that merit the label  a priori and are capable of conferring justification. It
seems plausible that there are such processes. The processes of mathematical
and logical reasoning are salient candidates for such processes. They are
processes of pure ratiocination, which is the hallmark of the a priori. So I
see no reason why epistemic naturalism cannot cheerfully countenance a
priori warrant (Goldman 1999).5
It is an additional question, however, whether arriving at classification
intuitions is a species of a priori process, and whether it gives rise to belief
that is warranted a priori. This must be examined carefully. We must first
distinguish between first- and third-person uses of application intuitions
to draw conclusions about concepts. Start with the third-person perspec-
tive on application intuitions.
5. A main theme of naturalistic epistemology is that the project of epistemology is not a
(purely) a priori project. But it doesn t follow from this that there is no a priori warrant at all.
19
Concept-analyzing philosophers seek the intuitions of others as well
their own. Third-person conceptual investigation can readily be inter-
preted as a proto-scientifi c, quasi-experimental enterprise, the aim of
which is to reveal the contents of category-representing states. Under
this quasi-experimental construal, each act of soliciting and receiving an
application judgment from a respondent may be considered a complex
experimental procedure. The experimenter presents a subject with two
verbal stimuli: a description of an example and an instruction to classify
the example as either an instance or a non-instance of a specified concept
or predicate. The subject then makes a verbal response to these stimuli,
which is taken to express an application intuition. This intuition is taken
as a datum  analogous to a meter reading  for use in testing hypotheses
about the content of the concept in the subject s head. From the point of
view of the experimenter, the philosopher engaged in conceptual analysis
directed at another person, the evidence is distinctly observational, and
hence empirical. The warrant he acquires for any belief about the subject s
concept is empirical warrant.
What about first-person cases, where a philosopher consults his own
intuitions? This is where a priori warrant looks most promising. In consult-
ing one s own intuition, one makes no observation, at least no perceptual
observation. Does this suffi
ce to establish that any warrant based on the
intuition is a priori warrant? No. Although the inference from non-obser-
vational warrant to a priori warrant is often made, I think it s a mistake.
Some sources of warrant are neither perceptual nor a priori. One example
is introspection; a second is memory. Introspection-based warrant about
one s current mental states is not a priori warrant; and memory-based
warrant about episodes in one s past is not a priori warrant. Since some
sources of warrant are neither perceptual nor a priori, application intuition
might be another such source.
Indeed, the process of generating classification intuitions has more in
common with memory retrieval than with purely intellectual thought or
ratiocination, the core of the a priori. The generation of classification intu-
itions involves the accessing of a cognitive structure that somehow encodes
a representation of a category. Of the various sources mentioned above,
this most resembles memory, which is the accessing of a cognitive structure
that somehow encodes a representation of a past episode. Thus, although
I am perfectly willing to allow that application intuitions confer warrant,
I don t agree that the type of warrant they confer is a priori warrant.
20
9. Kornblith s critique of  détente
In this final section I briefly respond to Hilary Kornblith s critique of my
approach as presented in earlier papers. Kornblith (this volume) argues
that the  détente I offer between methodological naturalism and the
method of appeals to intuition just won t work. There are three strands to
his argument. The first concerns the question of whose concepts philoso-
phers should analyze, and whether intuitions should be uncontaminated
by theory (i.e., as Kornblith interprets it, whether the preferred concepts
should be pre-theoretical). The second concerns the question of whether
there is any point to the project of studying commonsense epistemic
concepts as a precursor to the study of scientific epistemology. I have
defended the value of studying commonsense concepts, as a first stage
of philosophizing. Kornblith disputes its importance. Third, Kornblith
claims that standard philosophical analysis is committed to the thesis
that concepts are mentally represented as necessary and sufficient condi-
tions, the so-called  classical view of concepts. This view, Kornblith tells
us, has been refuted by empirical psychology. So here is a sharp conflict
between empirical findings and traditional philosophical methodology.
How can I hope to achieve a détente between empirical psychology and
traditional philosophical methodology when the two approaches conflict
so sharply?
On the first point, Kornblith argues against the view that we should
study just the intuitions and concepts of the folk. On the contrary, he
urges, the theory-informed intuitions of thoughtful philosophers should
count for more than the intuitions of the folk (who have given no sys-
tematic thought to a philosophical topic). Furthermore, in contrast to
the methodological precept that urges suspicion of theory-contaminated
intuitions, Kornblith says that theory-informedness is a good thing.
The problem with this argument is that two entirely different relation-
ships are being conflated between theories and concepts (or theories and
intuitions). A theory can be related to a concept either by being embedded
in the concept or by being a theory of the concept. A theory of a concept
says that the concept has such-and-such content. A theory embedded in a
concept isn t about the concept at all; it s about some other set of phenom-
ena. The intuitional methodology I preach only says that one should avoid
intuitions that are influenced by a theory of the target concept. Influence
by such a theory can prevent the target from issuing a  normal response
to an example, a response that expresses the real content of the concept.
21
The methodologist s desire to avoid theory-contaminated intuitions should
not be confused with a desire to avoid intuitions concerning theory-
embedded concepts. There is nothing undesirable about theory-embedded
concepts. I part company with Kornblith when he suggests that theory-
embedded concepts are superior to theory-free concepts, because there are
all sorts of theories. A concept that embeds a bad theory is of dubious
worth. So I don t share Kornblith s preference for consulting philosophers
intuitions simply because their concepts embed theories more than folk
concepts do. The crucial point, however, is the distinction between a
methodological stricture against theory-contaminated intuitions and a
possible stricture against theory-embedded concepts. I endorse only the
former.
Kornblith s second criticism takes issue with my endorsing the study
of folk epistemic concepts as a helpful precursor to the study of scientific
epistemology. This endorsement was predicated on the idea that we must
first identify the features of folk epistemology in order to figure out how
it might be transcended by scientific epistemology, while ensuring that
the latter project is continuous with the former. Here is an illustration
of what I had in mind. Examining folk epistemic concepts should reveal
how truth (true belief) is a primary basis of epistemic evaluation and epis-
temic achievement. This is indicated, for example, by the truth-condition
on knowledge and the reliability desideratum associated with justified-
ness. When moving from folk epistemology to scientific epistemology, we
should retain the concern with truth-related properties of methods and
practices. We should try to make them more reliable than our existing
practices. If we never studied folk epistemic concepts, or studied them
without proper understanding, this desideratum might elude us. It has
indeed eluded postmodernists and (many) sociologists of science, who
spurn the activity of conceptual analysis applied to concepts like knowl-
edge or justification. They preach a kind of reformed or purified epistemic
regime that ignores truth altogether. This radical and unfortunate detour
from traditional epistemological concerns could be avoided by not aban-
doning folk epistemic notions and not neglecting the important features
they highlight, such as truth.
Kornblith s third criticism is that a serious respect for the findings of
cognitive science is incompatible with traditional conceptual analysis. I
cannot advocate both, as I appear to do. Traditional analysis assumes that
concepts are represented in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions,
whereas cognitive science tells us that concepts take quite a different form
22
from this classical one. Kornblith urges us to heed the teaching of cogni-
tive science and abandon traditional conceptual analysis.
I deny that traditional analysis is committed to the thesis that concepts
(in the psychological sense) are mentally represented by features that
are individually necessary and jointly sufficient. In fact, in two previ-
ous papers (Goldman 1992; Goldman and Pust 1998: 193 194) I have
specifically recommended the exemplar-based approach that Kornblith
also calls to our attention. The method of consulting intuitions about
cases places no constraint on the psychological format of concept repre-
sentations. Any hypothesis about concept representations that correctly
predicts  observed classification intuitions is tenable and welcome. Intu-
ition-driven methodology imposes no requirement that hypotheses must
posit a classical format for concept representation. True, in formulating
the content of a concept representation, philosophers have customar-
ily adopted the format of necessary and sufficient conditions, but I see
nothing essential about that practice. For example, a recursive format
could be adopted instead, using base clauses, recursive clauses, and a
closure clause. In any case, exemplar based data-structures, paired with
a set of similarity operations, might well yield classification judgments
that can be captured in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. (The
conditions might involve a rather tedious set of disjunctions of conjunc-
tions.) So the necessary-and-sufficient-conditions format for expressing
a concept s content is neutral with respect to the psychological  syn-
tax by means of which the concept is psychologically represented (and
processed).
Finally, I disagree with Kornblith s claim that commitment to a neces-
sary and sufficient condition style of analysis biases philosophers toward
unrealistically elegant or  pretty analyses and toward dismissal of intu-
itions that shouldn t be dismissed. He criticizes philosophers, for example,
for trying to explain away data that seem to show that knowledge can be
false, by appeal to examples like  Most of what the experts know turns out
not to be true . Admittedly, epistemologists commonly seek an alterna-
tive explanation of such intuitively acceptable utterances, an explanation
that explains away the implication of false knowledge. But I see nothing
wrong with this. It is plausible to explain such cases by saying that our
speech often describes direct or indirect discourse, or propositions that are
objects of propositional attitudes, while omitting overt quotation marks
or attitudinal operators. In the present case, the utterance probably means
something like this:  Most of what so-called experts credit themselves
23
with knowing, or are credited by others with knowing, turns out to be
false . Here s another case (due to Richard Feldman, 2003: 13) of a (true)
sentence that apparently implies the existence of false knowledge. You
are reading a mystery story in which all the clues, until the last chapter,
point toward the butler. Only at the end do you learn that the accountant
did it. After finishing the book you say,  I knew all along that the butler
did it, but then it turned out that he didn t . Pursuing the explanatory
scheme suggested above, one might paraphrase the sentence as follows:
 All along I was prepared to say,  I know that the butler did it , but then it
turned out that he didn t . This is a good explanation of how the sentence
is understood, and it doesn t imply the falsity of what was known. This
simple explanation of an apparent departure from the rule that knowledge
is true looks like a perfectly good maneuver. It offers a general principle of
language use that has considerable appeal and makes sense of the indicated
utterances. It doesn t look implausibly ad hoc, and certainly not driven by
an unreasonable commitment to necessary-and-sufficient-conditions-style
analyses.
So, to summarize this last section, Kornblith hasn t given us good reason
to think that taking cognitive science seriously forces us to abandon the
intuitional methodology of conceptual analysis, at least if this methodol-
ogy is understood in the liberal way I have sketched.
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